A.M. Vitals: Merck Third-Quarter Earnings Fall By Less Than Expected

By Katherine Hobson

Merck Reports: Merck’s third-quarter earnings fell by less than expected, and the company raised the low end of its full-year profit forecast, the WSJ reports. Excluding special items, earnings dipped to 85 cents per share from 90 cents; analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had expected 82 cents a share, the WSJ says. Revenue rose to $11.12 billion, less than the $11.24 billion analysts had forecast.

Tracking an Outbreak: Aid agencies operating in Haiti are concerned about suspected cases of cholera cropping up closer to the capital city of Port-au-Prince, the BBC reports. A Save the Children worker told the BBC that 174 suspected cases are being investigated in an area about an hour from the city. The Pan American Health Organization says the outbreak has claimed least 292 lives so far.

Hepatitis Hopes: Drug makers Johnson & Johnson, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Merck are hoping their experimental drugs to treat hepatitis C will let them tap what is expected to be a $9 billion global market by 2015, the WSJ reports. Current treatments have side effects and work only in a minority of patients; clinical-trial results so far suggest that telaprevir, from J&J and Vertex, and boceprevir, from Merck, work better than the drugs being used now, the WSJ says.

Soda Debate: The gross-out public-health ad campaign in NYC that said drinking soda could make you fat was the subject of internal debate within the health department, the NYT reports. Emails show the health commissioner disagreed with his own staffers, who cautioned that the message in a viral video that soda consumption could add 10 pounds per year wouldn’t hold true for everyone.